Bold Ideas, Essential Reading since 1936.

Rutgers University Press is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge for a wide range of readers. The Press reflects and extends the University’s core mission of research, instruction, and service. They enhance the work of their authors through exceptional publications that shape critical issues, spark debate, and enrich teaching. Core subjects include: film and media studies, sociology, anthropology, education, history, health, history of medicine, human rights, urban studies, criminal justice, Jewish studies, American studies, women's, gender, and sexuality studies, LGBTQ, Latino/a, Asian and African studies, as well as books about New York, New Jersey, and the region.

Rutgers also distributes books published by Bucknell University Press.

Showing 101-150 of 2,599 items.

Genocide Studies

Pathways Ahead

Rutgers University Press

In recent years, the world has been shaken by numerous events that have caused and continue to cause massive human suffering, from the COVID-19 pandemic to intrastate and interstate armed conflicts. These crises confound definition and label, but now is the time to think about current manifestations of genocide and those likely to emerge in the future
 

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Finding God in All the Black Places

Sacred Imaginings in Black Popular Culture

Rutgers University Press

Using a media studies lens of television, film, music, and digital culture, Finding God in All the Black Places argues that Black spirituality and church religiosity bolster audiences' understanding of and cultural competence with Black popular culture.
 

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Embracing Queer Students’ Diverse Identities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

A Primer for Presidents, Administrators, and Faculty

Rutgers University Press

Embracing Queer Students’ Diverse Identities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities: A Primer for Presidents, Administrators, and Faculty serves as a resource for Historically Black College and University (HBCU) stakeholders and highlights fundamental concerns and urgent topics regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) HBCU constituents.
 

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Embracing Queer Students’ Diverse Identities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

A Primer for Presidents, Administrators, and Faculty

Rutgers University Press

Embracing Queer Students’ Diverse Identities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities: A Primer for Presidents, Administrators, and Faculty serves as a resource for Historically Black College and University (HBCU) stakeholders and highlights fundamental concerns and urgent topics regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) HBCU constituents.
 

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Difficult Attachments

Anxieties of Kinship and Care

Rutgers University Press

Anthropologists have long considered kinship as the basis for social solidarity. But, what about when it is not? What about instances when kinship is characterized by neglect, violence, negative affect, or a lack of care? This edited volume, featuring slim and cutting-edge essays from a diverse group of anthropologists at different career stages, explores situations when kinship is experienced as difficult and ambivalent.   

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Care and Agency

The Andean Community through the Eyes of Children

Rutgers University Press

This book describes the lives of children in rural communities of the Andes Mountains of Peru. It foregrounds the children’s own perceptions and feelings, so far as they can be known by researchers using ethnographic methods. It shows the great variety of Andean childhoods – some happy, others harsh and demanding – and suggests the options children face: follow the many to migrate to the city or risk their hopes on a better future in the rural setting. 
 

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Background Artist

The Life and Work of Tyrus Wong

Rutgers University Press

Background Artist tells the inspiring story of Tyrus Wong, a Chinese immigrant who eventually became a best-selling greeting card designer, Warner Bros. sketch artist, and instrumental influence on the beloved Disney animated film, Bambi. Covering his remarkable 106-year life, this book celebrates a multi-talented and pioneering Asian-American artist whose work shaped the American imagination.

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Bruce Songs

The Music of Bruce Springsteen, Album-by-Album, Song-by-Song

Rutgers University Press

Bruce Songs: The Music of Bruce Springsteen, Album-by-Album, Song-by-Song is an authoritative guide by Kenneth Womack and Kenneth L. Campbell, delving into Bruce Springsteen's entire musical catalog, offering detailed album analysis, historical context, and song-by-song exploration. Packed with contemporary insights and rich visuals, it's an essential companion for Springsteen fans and music enthusiasts.

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We Take Care of Our Own

Faith, Class, and Politics in the Art of Bruce Springsteen

Rutgers University Press

We Take Care of Our Own traces the evolution of Bruce Springsteen’s beliefs, beginning with his New Jersey childhood and ending with his most recent works from Springsteen on Broadway to Letter to You. The author follows the singer’s life, examining his albums and a variety of influences (both musical and non-musical), especially his Catholic upbringing and his family life, to show how he became an outspoken icon for working-class America; indeed for working class life throughout the world.
 

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The Bravest Pets of Gotham

Tales of Four-Legged Firefighters of Old New York

Rutgers University Press

The Bravest Pets of Gotham takes readers on a fun historical tour of Old New York, sharing more than 100 touching, thrilling and amusing stories about the bond between FDNY firefighters and their four-legged friends. You’ll meet countless brave and intelligent firehouse pets, from horses, dogs, and cats to monkeys and goats. 
 

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Singular Sensations

A Cultural History of One-Panel Comics in the United States

Rutgers University Press

Michelle Ann Abate examines what The Family CircusZiggy, and The Far Side all have in common—they’re single-panel comics, a seemingly simple form that presents cartoonists with a wide range of possibilities. Covering everything from nineteenth-century political cartoons to twenty-first-century web comics, she reveals their complexity, artistry, and influence.  

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Reel Kabbalah

Jewish Mysticism and Neo-Hasidism in Contemporary Cinema

Rutgers University Press

Reel Kabbalah studies representations of esoteric Jewish conceptual traditions known as Kabbalah and Hasidism in five important fictional films from the first decade of the twenty-first century.  The book considers how film both stands in continuity with those traditions and modifies them in the New Age, often mystical vein of what is known as neo-Kabbalah and neo-Hasidism.

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Performing the News

Identity, Authority, and the Myth of Neutrality

Rutgers University Press

Performing The News: Identity, Authority, & the Myth of Neutrality explores how journalists from historically marginalized groups have felt pressure to conform when performing for audiences and are increasingly challenging restrictive, supposedly neutral forms of self-presentation. Through in-depth interviews, this book suggests ways to make journalism more inclusive and representative of diverse audiences

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Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike, Second Edition

Rutgers University Press

This classic work reveals the fascinating history, iconography, and people behind the twelve-lane behemoth we call the New Jersey Turnpike. Now a special updated and expanded edition examines how the road has changed in the past thirty-five years yet still epitomizes America at its very best and very worst.  

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Laboring in the Shadow of Empire

Race, Gender, and Care Work in Portugal

Rutgers University Press

Laboring in the Shadow of Empire: Race, Gender and Care Work in Portugal examines the everyday lives of an African descendant care service workforce that labors in an ostensibly “anti-racial” Europe and against the backdrop of the Portuguese colonial empire. While much of the literature on global care work has focused on Asian and Latine migrant care workers, there is comparatively less research that explicitly examines African care workers and their migration histories to Europe. Sociologist Celeste V. Curington focuses on Portugal—a European setting with comparatively liberal policies around family settlement and naturalization for migrants. In this setting, rapid urbanization in the late twentieth century, along with a national push to reconcile work and family, have shaped the growth of paid home care and cleaning service industries.

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Isle of Rum

Havana Club, Cultural Mediation, and the Fight for Cuban Authenticity

Rutgers University Press

Focusing on Havana Club rum as a case study, Isle of Rum examines the ways in which western cultural producers, working in collaboration with the Cuban state, have assumed responsibility for representing Cuba to the outside world. Christopher Chávez focuses specifically on the role of advertising practitioners, musicians, filmmakers, and visual artists, who stand to benefit economically by selling an image of Cuba to consumers who desperately crave authentic experiences that exist outside of the purview of the marketplace.

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Gender Play

Boys and Girls in School

By Barrie Thorne; Introduction by Raewyn Connell and Michael A. Messner; Afterword by C.J. Pascoe
Rutgers University Press

A detailed and perceptive ethnography told with compassion and humor, Gender Play immerses readers in children’s everyday lives to examine the social interactions that shape their gender identities.  This new edition contains an introduction by Michael A. Messner and Raewyn Connell that highlights the book’s innovative approach, and an afterword by C.J. Pascoe on its lasting legacy. 
 

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Decentering Epistemologies and Challenging Privilege

Critical Care Ethics Perspectives

Rutgers University Press

This book discusses the ways care ethics contributes to the decentering of dominant epistemologies and to the challenging of privilege, and considers how to decenter care ethics itself via an encounter with non-Western philosophical traditions and alternative epistemologies. Written by scholars from different countries, disciplines and intellectual traditions, the volume offers original care ethics contributions on epistemic injustice, privileged irresponsibility, ecofeminism, settler colonialism, social movements such as BLM, and on various racialized and gendered inequities tied to care work.

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Decentering Epistemologies and Challenging Privilege

Critical Care Ethics Perspectives

Rutgers University Press

This book discusses the ways care ethics contributes to the decentering of dominant epistemologies and to the challenging of privilege, and considers how to decenter care ethics itself via an encounter with non-Western philosophical traditions and alternative epistemologies. Written by scholars from different countries, disciplines and intellectual traditions, the volume offers original care ethics contributions on epistemic injustice, privileged irresponsibility, ecofeminism, settler colonialism, social movements such as BLM, and on various racialized and gendered inequities tied to care work.

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Blessings Beyond the Binary

Transparent and the Queer Jewish Family

Rutgers University Press

Blessings Beyond the Binary: Transparent and the Queer Jewish Family brings together leading scholars to analyze and offer commentary on the groundbreaking streaming series Transparent. The book explores the show’s depiction of Jewish life, religion, and history, as well as Transparent’s scandals, criticisms, and how it fits and diverges from today’s transgender and queer politics. 

 

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My Race Is My Gender

Portraits of Nonbinary People of Color

Rutgers University Press

My Race is My Gender is the first anthology by nonbinary writers of color to include photography and visual portraits, centering their everyday experiences of negotiating intersectional identities. Bringing together Black, Indigenous, Latine, and Asian perspectives, its six contributors share their personal stories of working for racial justice and the recognition of queer gender identities. 

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Locker Room Talk

A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside

Rutgers University Press

Melissa Ludtke offers a compelling account of her courtroom quest to do what her male sportswriter colleagues took for granted: to talk with players in Major League Baseball’s locker rooms. She reveals how, as a 26-year-old woman, she took MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn to federal court—and won. 

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Alien Soil

Oral Histories of Great Migration Newark

Rutgers University Press

Alien Soil: Oral Histories of Great Migration Newark looks at Newark, New Jersey’s once proposed Krueger-Scott African-American Cultural Center and the oral history collection generated to be a part of the Center. The narrators in this oral history collection recount their lives in Newark, painting pictures of everyday urbanity while also providing insight into 20th century Black urban life more generally.

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The Georgia of the North

Black Women and the Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey

Rutgers University Press

The Georgia of the North is a compelling narrative about the little-known struggles that African American women, and their community, faced when they arrived in the Garden State by way of the Great Migration to 1954 as they laid the foundations of the American civil rights movement in the North in the process.

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Soviet-Born

The Afterlives of Migration in Jewish American Fiction

Rutgers University Press

How does being Soviet-born inflect one’s grasp of Jewishness in North America? Reading across the many English-language works by Soviet-born writers, Soviet-Born: The Afterlives of Migration in Jewish American Fiction demonstrates how these diasporic authors recast such pivotal literary themes as Eastern Europe, the Holocaust, communism, gender and intimacy, and migrant solidarities.

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Latin* Students in Engineering

An Intentional Focus on a Growing Population

Rutgers University Press

Latin* Students in Engineering examines the state of Latin* engineering education at present as well as considerations for policy and practice regarding engineering education aimed at enhancing opportunity and better serving Latin* students. The essays in this volume first consider, theoretically and empirically, the experiences of Latin* students in engineering education and then expand beyond the student level to focus on institutional and social structures that challenge Latin* students' success and retention.
 

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Film Noir and the Arts of Lighting

Rutgers University Press

More than any other films from the classical era, the Hollywood film noir is known for its lighting. Film Noir and the Arts of Lighting offers a new account of this craft, grounded in a larger theory of cinematography as emotionally engaging storytelling. Featuring analyses of The Asphalt Jungle, Touch of Evil, and more.

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An Ordinary Landscape of Violence

Women Loving Women in Guyana

Rutgers University Press

An Ordinary Landscape of Violence focuses on the intertwining layers of violence experienced by women loving women in Guyana. This book offers readers insights into the complicated ways that violence as an affect is enacted, experienced, and used by several constituencies in the country, including women loving women in the forms of self-harm and intimate partner violence against their partners. It illustrates how women respond to violence in the Guyana and calls for a politics of collective healing.

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Smoothing the Jew

"Abie the Agent" and Ethnic Caricature in the Progressive Era

Rutgers University Press

Both the object of admiration and anxiety, Jewish immigrants to the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century were often depicted in derogatory caricatures. Smoothing the Jew investigates how Jewish artists of the time attempted to “smooth over” these demeaning images, focusing on the first Jewish comic strip published in English, Harry Hershfield’s Abie the Agent.

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Intelligent Action

A History of Artistic Research, Aesthetic Experience, and Artists in Academia

Rutgers University Press

Intelligent Action: A History of Artistic Research, Aesthetic Experience, and Artists in Academia explores how conceptual and performance artists of the long 1960s developed oppositional practices within and alongside the American university, an institution that registers the priorities of capitalism, technological change, and social justice movements in intensified ways.

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Home Is Where Your Politics Are

Queer Activism in the U.S. South and South Africa

Rutgers University Press

Home Is Where Your Politics Are is a vivid consideration of queer and trans activism in the US South and South Africa, situated in their own contexts and international narratives about those contexts. The book traverses international borders as boldly as the activists present in the text declare these spaces home.

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Get Involved!

Stories of Bahamian Civil Society

Rutgers University Press

Using the Caribbean as a rich site of observance and concentrating on the island nation-state of The Bahamas, Get Involved! uncovers the hidden and under-documented practices of “philanthropy from below.” Williams-Pulfer shows the long history and continued significance of civil society and philanthropic engagement in The Bahamas, the circum-Caribbean, and the wider African Diaspora.

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Feeling Democracy

Emotional Politics in the New Millennium

Rutgers University Press

The contributors to Feeling Democracy examine how both reactionary and progressive politics in the twenty-first century are driven largely by emotional appeals to the public. These essays cover everything from immigrants’ rights movements to white nationalist rallies to show how solidarities forged around gender, race, and sexuality become catalysts for a passionate democratic politics.

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Cruel Destiny and The White Negress

Two Novels by Cléante Desgraves Valcin

Rutgers University Press

Cruel Destiny (Cruelle Destinée) and The White Negress (La Blanche Négresse) are the first and second novels published by a Haitian woman, Cléante ValcinTranslated to English now for the first time by Jeanne Jégousso, these novels offer an incisive perspective on the fate, romance, and reversals of characters in Haiti, the Pearl of the Antilles, during the 1920s and 1930s.

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Criminalized Lives

HIV and Legal Violence

Rutgers University Press

Criminalized Lives profiles people charged in Canada with the crime of not disclosing their HIV-positive status to sex partners. Examining how criminalization disproportionately punishes poor, Black and Indigenous people, gay men, and women in Canada, Alexander McClelland investigates the consequences of criminalizing illness, which results in people being subjected to state violence rather than treated with care.
 

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Brotherhood University

Black Men's Friendships and the Transition to Adulthood

Rutgers University Press

In Brotherhood University, Brandon A. Jackson examines how a group of collegiate Black men form an emotion culture characterized by vulnerability, loyalty, and trust, which facilitated the creation of brotherhood. This enduring bond provided the men with the necessary social support to navigate the precarity of the transition to adulthood and gendered racism both during and after college.
 

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American Anti-Pastoral

Brookside, New Jersey and the Garden State of Philip Roth

Rutgers University Press

Combining literary analysis with historical research, Thomas Gustafson examines how Philip Roth’s acclaimed 1997 novel American Pastoral draws upon the history of Brookside, New Jersey as its model for the fictional hamlet of Old Rimrock. American Anti-Pastoral peels back myths about the bucolic Garden State countryside to reveal deep fissures within the heart of American democracy.

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The Specter and the Speculative

Afterlives and Archives in the African Diaspora

Rutgers University Press

The Specter and the Speculative examines how historical subjects and texts within the African Diaspora are re-fashioned, re-animated, and re-articulated, as well as parodied, nostalgized, and defamiliarized. The essays, by emergent and established scholars, explore how “living” archives circulate and haunt the popular imagination, engendering afterlives and liberating prior narratives from their original context.

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The Specter and the Speculative

Afterlives and Archives in the African Diaspora

Rutgers University Press

The Specter and the Speculative examines how historical subjects and texts within the African Diaspora are re-fashioned, re-animated, and re-articulated, as well as parodied, nostalgized, and defamiliarized. The essays, by emergent and established scholars, explore how “living” archives circulate and haunt the popular imagination, engendering afterlives and liberating prior narratives from their original context.

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Wake

Why the Battle over Diverse Public Schools Still Matters

Rutgers University Press

Wake: Why the Battle Over Diverse Public Schools Still Matters tells the story of the aftermath of the 2009 Wake County school board election in favor of "neighborhood schools," including the fierce public debate that ensued during school board meetings and in the pages of the local newspaper, and the groundswell of community support that voted in a pro-diversity school board in 2011. What was at stake in those years was the fundamental direction of the largest school district in North Carolina and the 14th largest in the U.S. Would it maintain a commitment to diverse schools, and if so, how would it balance that commitment with various competing interests and demands? Through hundreds of published opinion articles and several in depth interviews with community leaders, Wake examines the substance of that debate and explores the community’s vision for public education.

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The United States and the Armenian Genocide

History, Memory, Politics

Rutgers University Press

This is the first book to examine how and why the United States refused to officially acknowledge the 1915-17 Armenian Genocide until the early 2020s. Drawing from congressional records, rare newspapers, and interviews with lobbyists and decision-makers, historian Julien Zarifian reveals how genocide recognition became such a complex, politically sensitive issue.

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The Other Jersey Shore

Life on the Delaware River

Rutgers University Press

The Other Jersey Shore takes readers on a personal tour of the New Jersey portion of the Delaware River and its surroundings, from the archeological remnants of the former King of Spain’s mansion to waterfalls where bears and foxes frolic. Combining history and nature writing, it shares engrossing stories and surprising facts about a river that is both the backbone and lifeblood of the Garden State. 

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Surviving Alex

A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction

Rutgers University Press

Patricia Roos was a professor of sociology at Rutgers University when she lost her 25-year-old son Alex to a heroin overdose. Turning her grief into action, she began to research the social factors and institutional failures that contributed to his death. Surviving Alex tells her moving story while describing a more compassionate approach that would provide proper care to substance users and reduce addiction.

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Meltdown Expected

Crisis, Disorder, and Upheaval at the end of the 1970s

Rutgers University Press

Meltdown Expected tells the story of how, both domestically and internationally, 1978 and 1979 saw a series of catastrophes that shook America’s confidence and hurtled the nation into the final phase of the Cold War. Covering everything from the Three Mile Island disaster to the Iran hostage crisis, it is a vivid portrait of a tumultuous time. 

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Jewish Education

Rutgers University Press

Jewish education has been dominated by two concerns: What ought to be taught? And what is the best way to teach it?  This book upends the conventional approaches by asking a different question: How do people learn to engage in Jewish life?
 

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Governing Maya Communities and Lands in Belize

Indigenous Rights, Markets, and Sovereignties

Rutgers University Press

In Belize, conservation NGOs push for wildlife sanctuaries to protect endangered ecosystems. State actors authorize timber extraction to generate revenue for debt repayment. Maya communities, dispossessed by state and NGO strategies, pursue claims for Indigenous rights to lands. This book explores the conflicting forms of governance that emerge as these trajectories intersect.

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Global Film Color

The Monopack Revolution at Midcentury

Rutgers University Press

Global Film Color: The Monopack Revolution at Midcentury explores color filmmaking around the world during the mid-century era when color came to dominate global film production. As Eastmancolor, Agfacolor, Fujicolor and other film stocks became broadly available and affordable, national film industries increasingly converted to color, transforming the look and feel of global cinema.

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Global Film Color

The Monopack Revolution at Midcentury

Rutgers University Press

Global Film Color: The Monopack Revolution at Midcentury explores color filmmaking around the world during the mid-century era when color came to dominate global film production. As Eastmancolor, Agfacolor, Fujicolor and other film stocks became broadly available and affordable, national film industries increasingly converted to color, transforming the look and feel of global cinema.

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Beaches, Bays, and Barrens

A Natural History of the Jersey Shore

Rutgers University Press

Biologist Eric G. Bolen introduces readers to the natural wonders of the Jersey Shore, taking them on a guided tour of its unique ecology and fascinating history. You’ll learn about everything from sand dunes to salt marshes, from blueberry patches to cranberry bogs, and from ship wrecks to shark attacks. 

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At the Glacier’s Edge

A Natural History of Long Island from the Narrows to Montauk Point

Rutgers University Press

Combining science writing, environmental history, and first-hand accounts from a longtime resident, At the Glacier’s Edge offers a unique narrative natural history of Long Island. It tells the story of how its habitats evolved, how humans radically degraded its landscape, and how community activists are restoring the land and preserving the species who depend on it. 

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